The Trembling Panic In Between
by whitelilly0989
Summary: Sequel to "An Ocean in Between". Hope you guys like what's inside :


A life beside you

**Author's Note: **_Well, it's not TBR but it's something, right? Lol. Okay, so this is a sequel to "An Ocean In Between". "An Ocean" was one of the most random stories ever, BUT it was never intended to be a fanfiction piece. It was something I wrote as a free topic for my Writing Class, and I fixed the technicalities to make it a Fanfic. (in the original "An Ocean" the guy's name was Jake, and the girl's name was Lesley, random thought lol). So now, this semester, There's another free assignment on my Writing Class… so… this came out._

_I had to ask myself what I could write to make a sequel with the open ending I left in "An Ocean", and I realize that the boy (Ryan) had done almost everything in his power to make her go back to him, so the girl (Taylor) had to be scared right? Hence the title lol. _

_I was hoping you could tell me what you think of this. I know it's not TBR, like I already said… but it is RT to some extent (in my assignment they're still named differently lol), so read it, and tell me what you think. _

_Also, I was thinking of attaching at the end an excerpt of my original story, the one I've been working on for these past two months. So… for now… Enjoy. _

_Shar _

_XOXOX_

**The Trembling Panic in Between. **

He still can't believe his eyes are staring at her. It's not unreasonable to doubt his senses, since the imaginative sector of his brain had gotten creative over the last six years and had produced visions of her before, but the mirage he's looking at right now is so aguishly beautiful that somewhere he knows it's the real thing.

And he still can't believe it.

There's a scale of colors depicted in the sky outside as the great ball of fire disappears completely. There's hazel and blue battling up there, colors meshing into one another until the blackness of the night makes them surrender, like nature intended to.

He finds himself wondering how long hazel and blue had battled before finally surrendering to some form of fate.

He's distracted by the way her gaze shifts to the glass in front of her, his chest aching dully at the lack of contact of their glances. His heart rate speeds up, because he knows he still can't believe she's here so what if she doesn't look up? What if he's staring at some mythical creature and she vanishes after the spell has ended?

But she does look up, and the glow of her lips is so overpowering he has to remind himself to take another breath… that his lungs need it to survive… because it feels like he could live off of just staring at hazel.

XOXOX

Her heart pumps so loud, she wonders if he can hear it.

Her bottom lip curls safely under her teeth as she presses down, trying to calm the raging way her blood runs warm in her veins. She dares a cautious glance through the safe curtain of auburn that falls in front of her lashes, and even though it's probably the briefest stare they'd ever shared, she knows his ears only hear the reckless thud her life-giving organ makes as it clashes with her ribcage.

He'd always been so good at interpreting the way her heart misbehaved for a powerful desire, or when it betrayed her because of some stupid fear.

_Stupid fear._

Suddenly, _his_ heart pumps so loud, she knows he smells the terror her skin exudes right this second.

XOXOX

Everything flips and perfection's not so perfect anymore.

He joins his hands together under the large wooden table in front of them as his eyes wander back to the parchment that has covered the sky by now.

It's black. The darkest tone of black.

There are no white bright points visible in the large canvas and even though he's never been a very insightful person, his mind can't help but wonder if the white fear in her eyes has stole the shimmer of the stars above.

By the time he looks at her again, her eyes are so glazed over, he feels in his chest as if a car had been going a thousand miles an hour and someone had pushed the break.

In the repetitive daydreams of her that he'd created, she'd never looked this scared. She'd never looked like this at all.

XOXOX

"_How have you been?"_ it's him who breaks the silence, and she feels a knot rise from her stomach. The irony of his forced whisper being the one talking first doesn't go unnoticed.

"_I've been good"_ her response lacks the kind of poetry he used to provoke in her vocal chords.

"_I'm glad"_ she knows it must be tearing at his insides to produce more than monosyllables, but it feels as if she's locked inside the four walls of her mind not daring to say more.

In the powerful memories that are still etched in her brain, threaded with imprecision since she'd rarely allowed herself to use them, she dimly remembers it was her job to blurt out words. But silence had danced between them for so long that she believes a part of her lost speech when there was reason to fight no more.

"_I'm not staying"_

It comes out croaked, rough, and so different from what her voice sounded in her head. It's so disjointed, like it's not her really saying it.

But it is her.

They had always been different. _She's_ the one who knows that.

XOXOX

His eyes can only focus in the myriad of auburn that moves swiftly on top of her shoulders as she closes the door of the café and combines with the dark outside.

He watches her leave for the… - he helplessly loses his track of thought.

His mind can't even count the times he's let her slip away without trying to even grasp her. There's always something about the way her orbs look when she builds up roadblocks that don't allow his entrance in her mind. It leaves no room for discussion, there's never a crack big enough for him to melt a way back to her heart.

In ways he knows that's why he loves her. "Determination" is her middle name and "Stubborn" is her last…

He wonders whose fault it is that she "Scared" seems to be her first now.

XOXOX

She never really knows how she ends up here.

Her hands clutch her knees tightly to her chest, her arms locked around them like vices that make it painful even to breathe. There's a wooden door touching the length of her back and she sort of remembers wood is supposed to be warm. But from the second she closed the door behind her, and slid impossibly to the ground of this strange hotel room, it's been as cold as if she's been in the North Pole.

She raises her head to look at the darkness of this place, loneliness almost being a character itself with the strongest of presence. She can't help but feel a sense of déjà vu. Even when she's never set foot in this hotel, and when California's so strange it doesn't feel like home, she knows she's lived this emptiness. Perhaps in a past life… The one she's lived in France all these years without a heart.

She never really knows how she ends up here, in this past life.

XOXOX

Step by step the road gets harder.

His nervous bleeding brain makes an unconscious decision to walk the road home instead of using the black SUV his success had given him. Tonight, using the car just doesn't fit, and somewhere he knows it's because, by walking, he's back to being a kid.

Her hair would be brighter; the Californian sun would be its only bleach. She'd be leaning against the door frame as the smell of tacos and chili would flare through his nostrils. He'd walk to her and his lips would be hers and they'd walk around Newport as some unconventional royalty.

He's back to being a kid. Back to the days when she was his.

The moment stops and thousands of orange city lights mark the street walk, creating shadows when his anatomy gets in the way. Maybe that's what he is to her, the shadows that intervene in her path to greatness.

So, tonight he walks on top of her footprints, the ones she left when she ran from him scarce hours ago, and he can literally feel how small parts of him are left behind in the dirty pavement.

Maybe he can walk enough until there's nothing left of him than the particles that were willing to chase after her again.

XOXOX

She's sitting in the bed of her hotel room as a love song blares from the stereo. She'd always been full of passion as for the lyrics of songs, an interpretation of true love or some real emotion she'd wish she'd feel. But tonight she can't distinguish any vocabulary in the music that blares painful and cutting, drawing blood from her ears. The tenor is sadness, and when the song ends it goes helplessly back to the beginning… making her wonder when it was or how she allowed the pain to flow back again.

She's turn the volume as far as it can go, hoping to drown her thoughts. But the pitch of the notes is so reliable, she can't help but feel her thoughts are much more clear in this chaotic mess than in the never ending silence that swallowed her happiness and never remembered to spit it back out.

_This is stupid_. She thinks and she knows it's true. _I love him._

_Is love stronger than fear?_

There's silence back again and she's left motionless, the stillness so sacred it's only broken by a stray tear that rolls down on her cheek.

XOXOX

_I'm not staying_. It still rings so unlike her in his eardrums; it hurts to see how much her voice has changed.

It's like her voice has turned into a moaning echo of how she used to be, of _who_ she used to be. His knuckles feel so tight and cold inside his pockets that he barely feels the needle pins under his skin that attempt at screaming blood needs to flow to his fingers and his palms. Is it his fault? Is him the one to blame?

He knows it used to be him the one running, the one who couldn't stand being with her and sharing her with the space an ocean created. He knows he'd never dared to say how much she meant, had he said _'It's you'_ too late in the game? Was she so scarred by his indecision that he'd torn her apart into bits and pieces of the woman he's only ever loved?

If she's not staying, where will she go? Where on the planet would be his home now?

XOXOX

She stares at the hotel room, its pristine walls and flawless décor sing at the classy part of her that adores art and what it has to offer. It looks so organized, clean and tidy enough to resuscitate a dormant trait of her long-dead personality. It's a stark contrast, the view her eyes see and the view her heart lives in: an empty chaos that destroys every trace of completion she's ever lived, stripping her to the very broken shell of who she is now… pulling at every hold that hangs her here… except for one.

Her leg comes up absentmindedly, as she stares at the black thin lines that form an 'RA' just below her ankle.

She remembers the day she started drawing that with a thick tip black marker, the edge of it recording in her skin the only thing the chaos and mess could never kill.

Her finger traces her ankle with reverence, as if touching his initials would be constructed as some sin. Something pulls inside of her, the desire of running back to him and neglect everything being almost as forceful as her pull to run away.

She knows she's his, but she can't stay. It's just too much… too much time has passed, too much pain has invaded her… too much silence has ruined them; too much water has washed them away.

But as her eyes never deviate from the black letters that name him as her owner, she remembers that she's marked by choice. Every day the water that washed the seal away down the drain, the same water that had held them hostages of different continents for six years would try and whiten the letters until her skin was clean again. And every day she'd draw it back…

Was that all she needed to do, then? Draw them a future, paint the initials once again in her heart?

But where was her heart?

XOXOX

It's raining by the time he reaches his building, the repetition of the past is so ironic is not even funny.

The main issue back then was that it rained on him but it never seemed like the rain reached its cold quality back in France. But now she's here… It rains in Berkeley which means it pours on him as it does on her.

Can't she feel it? If they'd felt a stagnant silence once before that was impossible to ignore, isn't there a way for her to feel through every raindrop the immensity of the love he feels for her? Can't she feel that it is safe to stay now? That he's ready to stand still, even if the rain plasters everything to his body as a second skin? Can't she see she doesn't have to run away, protecting him anymore?

XOXOX

Fear wins the battle. She gave him her heart and he forgot to give it back.

The night comes to an end. The Californian sun reigns again as master of the sky, blue in its immensity so dizzying and distracting.

She opens the trunk of the white rental and places the electric pink suitcase in it and slams it shut. It's as clear as if it had happened yesterday, the way the memory of his frown fills her eyes, blocking everything else in her surroundings.

His mouth twitched ever so slightly, looking at the rosy belongings sprawled up on her bed.

"_Why pink?"_ his tone had been amused underneath the macho swagger he'd always wore secretly.

"_It makes it easier to find it in the airport"_ It sounded like her voice. Chirpy, neurotic, filled with exaggerated gestures. It sounded like his _Taylor_.

"_It's going to blind me"_ his voice was so endearing, so enchanting…

Her insides trembled once the past disappeared, like it had many years ago. Her eyes slam shut. She'd sealed away this life. It'd been a mistake to come back here.

There was no hope. She had no heart.

XOXOX

Three days pass and silence's even louder than it ever has been during the past six years. She has no heart but it feels as though the void in her chest breaks in thousand invisible pieces. He's a broken mess, even if he goes through the motions of work and life without hinting it or showing it. They've both seen each other's faces just to relinquish each other again… and for the first time, the weight of the water has nothing to do with it…

They're both in the same country, the same place… and the space between them is even bigger than it's ever been.

XOXOX

Her hair falls in ringlets over her shoulders, making curls instead of straight lines of light brown. It's funny, how she's been here for three days and the sun's already making changes in her hair, drawing it back to what it used to be. She wonders if that's what being here, in the same country as him, does to her: change the coloring that brushed every corner of her self, cleaning out the different scales of gray to replace them with hazel and auburn… to fill the broken void with the absent heart _he_ holds in place.

The breeze moves a stray strand of hair that falls on her forehead, her arms so busy with supporting her empty shell of an existence on the railing of this place she once knew, that her heavy hands can't even bother to fight the wind. It seems oddly ironic, how she holds the same posture on the same place where he once changed her black existence into a fest of colors and shades she never knew the world had.

She feels a punch on top of her stomach that releases the heaviest of sighs. The air that goes out of her lungs is so light though, like it doesn't carry the torture her bleeding carcass holds inside. She looks at the sand under the railing, glistening vaguely in the moonlight. The waves of water crash into shore as the tide changes and the foam makes an effervescent sound that reminds her of fairies, fate and destiny, of a magic only the beach of Newport possesses.

She had meant to go to the airport that morning after seeing his angelic face and scrutinizing ice cold eyes, but the road had looked so abandoned, the glint of the sun had felt too unforgiving in her forehead and too blinding to her eyes, the contact of the rays making her skin sting in such a pleasurable way that reminded her of the olden days, of the gut-wrenching heat that welded forever her soul with his.

So instead she'd come here, to see if the place where the magic had begun was still intact and behold with her own eyes if the water in between them had left it unscathed.

It hasn't. There's no magic here.

Without him, she waits for her world to shift, for her eyes to adjust to the onslaught of rainbows that are supposed to come out of the prism that is her life, but there is a wall the crystallizes the light far from her reach. There's only darkness and gray as she swings the weight of her core into her left leg, his initials dragging her body further down in the mire that is her fear.

She can't help but wonder when was the second in which her absent heart had decided to make her a slave of this frightening sensation, the one that pulled her dreams and everything _he_ was to her a thousand miles away and she comes back to that internet conversation that had felt so real and so shattered in the same living breath.

"_Don't try to pretend I'm not here…!"_ even if she hadn't been able to see how blue turned into liquid fire as he'd typed the words, the void that was her chest knew the despair and blatant courage that had taken him to address the truth in the water-filled space.

If only he knew the edging anguish that consumed her when she'd said "_I can't, Ryan"_.

That was the sole reason, the unadulterated truth. He was in every living breath, in every silence loud enough to ache, in every word left unpronounced, in every letter ever written, in every fallen teardrop. It had never mattered how much she'd tried to escape his hunting essence, he was everywhere she redirected her gaze. The absence of him and the way he'd stolen her heart without mercy had turned his memory, from the archangel that had saved her from rotting away in her own façade, to the crude and hurting ghost that was impossible to face out.

How could she love the magic he'd created when he hadn't had enough faith to fight for her ever before? When he'd ripped her heart apart to flaunt it wherever he went with complete disregard of who she'd been? When he'd never tried to chase her, when he'd never attempted to break the cold wall that was her self defense?

Realization dawned on her features as a lump replaced the space where her vocal chords should be. There had been more than just an ocean in between them; it was more than water what had created the drift that was this pain. It was the sea of her panic and trepidation what devoured her sanity and safeness… what killed the magic and brought everything to being ordinary.

How could she let go of the fear?

How could she let go at all?

"_I knew I'd find you here"_

For the first time in six years, her mind is blank.

She turns around and she dimly registers how her hair sways, curls moving spastically near her neck. She feels her whole body tremble, because she knows the voice in its perfection and incandescent beauty. She's even counted the times she's fallen asleep with her brain recreating that hurtful saving music so she can at least see him in her dreams… pretending he's beside her as she wakes up mumbling his name at the other empty and cold side of the bed.

One thousand, seven hundred and eighty nine times.

But she sees him, standing tall in his Adonis-like perfection, spiky blonde hair shining in the fluorescent lights of the _Yatch Club_ as the rays bounce off the perfect ends that have nothing compared to the milky moonlight. She feels another punch in her stomach, but this time it doesn't release a sigh. She's in the presence of a god-like creature… the one and only person who can save and condemn every piece of what's left of her.

Her heart pumps slowly, tortuously savoring every beat, like molten rock burning every blood vessel in its way and leaving sweet warmness that melts the iceberg of her solitude.

"_Hey, what… what are you doing here?"_ She really meant to say _are you fighting for me now?_ But the sentence is too surreal to bring the comfort.

"_Come home"_ Her heart stops, her breathing rasps and the lull of the breeze is everything that dances in the space between them.

There's no silence, there's no water.

It's just them.

_Where's home?_ Her fear stammers and the self-induced monologue of her conscience starts springing out, telling her the reasons why she's not supposed to stay.

_But I did stay._ She refutes back, and looks around. It hurts her eyes to stop staring at the one and only true love she's ever had.

But as she takes in her surroundings, for the first time in forever, her reason's right. There's no Eiffel Tower here, there's no French being spoken in the citizens inside the Club, There's no water, there's no cold.

It's just them.

She stayed.

He dares a step towards her, calmly and resilient… He wears a loopy smile on his lips as he approaches, peaceful and clever… such a contrast from the way he approached her here when the words _"I know love when I see it"_ were spoken and had held even more truth than neither of them thought was possible.

Her body recoils reflexively, instinct barely alarming her of the shock her skin might feel at the contact of ice and fire. But his stare burns into hers and she sees the reflection of the brightness in his eyes and the dimness of her own. It's like she can see right in his soul all the pieces of her that she's never quite recovered, safe and sound, ready for him to hand them back to her.

He continues forward, his hand outstretches giving her one last decision, one last opportunity to pick which road to lead: standing still or running away.

"_Come home"_ behind the resolve there's quivering vulnerability, and she feels, for the first time in so long, how he hands _his_ heart to her for her to attach into her hole.

"_Where's home?"_ her voice still sounds disjointed. Like that's a tacit question that's ridiculous to be exteriorizing.

Her eyes freeze, and everything else cease to exist in the vicinity. He's so near her that his breath touches the bridge of her nose, as if he's doing it for her benefit, exhaling life so she can shine once more.

"_With me"_ he never says it. But she just feels it in the way his fingers slide softly across the length of her arm, touching his fingers delicately on her wrist, as the crease in his forehead disappears like an angel has just blurred it out.

"_Come home"_ he repeats for a third time and its then when the words hit a soft spot near her diaphragm that make her dizzy and unbalanced. Her mouth dries completely at the sight of his pain exposed, the words pounding in the inches between them, insistent.

He hasn't yelled, he hasn't growled. Not like that one time in the past when he'd told her they were different, when he'd given up to everything they could've been and the pool of her fright had begun to fill. He has just whispered, leaving everything he is and everything he's ever hoped to be in the wind that blows her hair, in the way _his_ heart pounds in her chest…

In the way she can hear _her_ heart pound away recklessly inside of _his_ ribcage.

It had been there all along, giving him the life he wanted, sacrificing her pain for nothing 'cause she's had his heart with her all along.

"_Okay…"_ It's so small. It's so idyllic the way just four letters can change her life. Because they are changing her life… The wall the stole the light away vanishes as thousands of colors jump and splash all around this fairytale. She's only felt like this once before, like the colors are so alive there's no darkness or pain ever big enough to make them vanish, and ironically enough that time had also been with him.

She attempts a smile, using the muscles in her face that she thought had stopped working for the lack of use, just to see that they're still there… that he's still here.

She glances from their entwined fingers up, and his blue eyes still blaze into hers, like he heard her inner fight from earlier when she'd wished he'd fight for her, when she'd wished he'd reappear here so this sacred spot where they'd shared the first of many kisses would regain his magic.

His inside her head and she knows she can't escape. God knows she's tried to outrun him, but right now she doesn't want to get away.

Colors, light and warmness envelop their every atom. Waves echo behind them, but they fall on deaf ears. All she can feel are his eyes that evaporate away every ounce of the vast colorless sea that was her dread…

Her pain, her void, her fear… all drained away by the heat that roams his skin. Everything's so clear now that their skins connect. How she's read the very essence of her soul and like the ink she would write every day in her own body, his name still cuts across her… like an acid she doesn't want to evade.

His heart still pumps rapidly inside of her, his lips still quiver now that they've stopped mumbling _Come home_ and repeat only her name.

_I love you, always have._ For the first time, is her who holds the sentiment in, but she knows in the way his fingers thread in her hair that the words might as well be seared in her forehead. It's always there… not necessarily spoken… like those instrumentals that tell a story just with their crescendos, speech too overrated to produce the feeling.

Their lips melt into nothing as the moon reflects like a mirror the right amount of love that had never been quite so clear.

There's no ocean, there's no water, there's no fear.

It's just them.

XOXOXOXXOXOXOXOXOXOXXXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOX

_Now, here you go. This is an excerpt of my original story. I haven't started posting it anywhere because it's only a draft but I just thought you should see what I've been doing this past two months and why I don't post much here. _

He closed his eyes and threw the jacket on his face again; hoping blackness would knock him out, leaving his arms unprotected and having instant goose bumps from the AC's cold.

He hated the cold. He honestly didn't know how people could stand it or seemed to be excited about snow no matter how "cute and unique" snowflakes were. In his opinion, if people wanted cute, they could buy a puppy, and if they wanted unique, staring at their own fingerprints should do the job.

That was as unique as things got to be in life. If you lived long enough, everything else always grew out to be common and ordinary.

"_Well, not everything"_ his mind retorted. He could only think of one exception.

His unwilling body twisted a little more than it should've, even considering the funny, not to mention, unhealthy way his spine was sprawled against the back of the chair. Suddenly, even in his jacket-covered eyelids that were supposed to see pitch black, there was a reflection, a strong angelic face that belonged in the biggest safe his mind could provide. Her eyes were gray; the clearest tone of gray he could remember. The light surrounding her made the orbs almost a watery shade of silver that belonged more in a chemistry lab than on a bronzed-haired creature; but strangely enough it wasn't the purity of them what held his interest. It was the way the iris' rims were defined by a marked shade of purple, cerulean almost.

His heart rate sped up as he allowed himself to feel the amount of kindness those eyes portrayed… the strongest feeling he'd ever experienced paling in comparison to the warmness they delivered.

There was _nothing_ common about them, and there was absolutely nothing ordinary about the way the only memory of that shade of gray would always jerk him into a straight sitting position, never mattering if he was asleep or awake.

XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

_Review! Should I get an A in this assignment? Did you like the story? What do you think of the excerpt?_

_Push the purple button and let me know. _


End file.
